North American Women's Drama

Whether in awards, production, or publication, plays by women have rarely received the attention they deserve. Of the more than 80 Pulitzer prizes for drama awarded since the inception of the prize in 1901, only eight have gone to women. From 1958 to 1981, not one woman received this prize.

North American Women’s Drama brings these writings the attention they deserve, by publishing the full text of 1,500 plays written from Colonial times to the present by more than 100 women from the United States and Canada. Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print. Almost a quarter of the collection consists of previously unpublished plays.

Now for the first time, these plays can be studied, analyzed, and read with ease. Each play is extensively and deeply indexed, allowing both keyword and multi-fielded searching. The plays are accompanied by reference materials, significant ancillary information, a rich performance database, and associated resources. The result is an exceptionally deep and unified collection—to give voices to women, to represent women’s issues, to break stereotypes, to examine women’s views, to present women in various roles, and simply to entertain.

North American Women’s Drama begins with the works of Mercy Otis Warren, Judith Sargent Murray, and Susanna Haswell Rowson in colonial times. It includes a rich collection of 19th-century melodramas exploring topics from domestic entrapment to life on the frontier to the Underground Railroad. The database covers the campaign for voting rights, including propaganda plays, as well as the growing crusade for women’s access to higher education and inclusion in various professions. The collection covers contemporary drama, including the works of performance artists.

The database is of particular relevance for the study of feminism and women’s studies. Alexander Street’s Semantic Indexing makes it possible to find and analyze particular dialogue, characters, and events, providing answers to these questions from the preface to Women in American Theatre, by Helen Krich Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins:

Where do women fit in?

Where can they make a living, have a career, and create authentic theatre art from women’s lives?

Is there a feminine sensibility in theatre creation?

Is it the result of nature (some essential female quality) or of nurture (the socialization that makes us feminine or masculine)?

Do women directors approach their tasks in markedly different ways from the practices of male directors?

Do women view the sacrifices and spoils of conventional success as men do?

Can they or should they try to break the ‘Broadway barrier?’

Do women playwrights have something special to say as women, not just as individual artists?

Do they create in a distinctive way, use unique forms, speak a long-silenced ‘mother tongue?’

Julia Miles, Artistic Director, Women’s Project & Productions (New York). Editor and compiler of several anthologies of women’s drama, including A Theatre for Women’s Voices: Plays and History from the Women’s Project at 25

What plays written by women are set in World War II and contain female characters who are soldiers?

Publication details

North American Women’s Drama is available on the Web, either through one-time purchase of perpetual rights or through annual subscription. It contains 1,500 plays, 1,200 of which appear in no other Alexander Street drama collection. A library that purchases perpetual rights will also receive an archival copy of the data.